THAT   MONSTER 


THE   HIGHER    CRITIC 


BY 


MARVIN  E.   VINCENT,  D.D. 


NEW  YORK 
ANSON  D.  F.  RANDOLPH  &  COMPANY 

(INCORI'OKATED) 

182  Fifth  Avenue 


"BS500 
VT7 


Z8.S>S 


4& 


£  ity  Qtyolagictu 


**. 


'*, 


PRINCETON,  N.  J.  <* 


Division.  JjJ!d..Jd  UD 

,V77 


Section. 


THAT    MONSTER 


THE   HIGHER  CRITIC 


BY 

MARVIN   R.   VINCENT,   D.D. 


NEW  YORK 
ANSON  D.   F.  RANDOLPH  &  COMPANY 

(incorporated) 
l82   FIFTH   AVENUE 


Copyright,  1894,  by 
ANSON  D.  F.  RANDOLPH  &•  COMPANY 

(incorporated) 


PRESS  OF 

EDWARD  O.  JKNKINS'   SON, 

NEW    YORK. 


THAT  MONSTER,  THE  HIGHER  CRITIC. 


Is  the  Biblical  critic  a  dangerous,  devouring  beast  ? 

A  good  many  think  so :  at  least  a  good  many  have 
an  impression  to  that  effect,  which  is  a  quite  different 
thing  from  thinking.  Nevertheless,  impressions  often 
carry  people  farther  than  intelligent  opinions ;  and  just 
because  a  mere  impression,  in  seven  cases  out  of  ten,  is 
untruthful,  and  because  it  cannot  give  a  rational  ac- 
count of  itself,  and  therefore  does  the  more  mischief, — 
it  needs  to  be  dealt  with. 

TTNEEASOXIXG   PAXIC. 

There  is  a  story  of  a  wag  who  laid  a  wager  that  he 
would  break  up  a  country  menagerie  and  circus.  Ac- 
cordingly, when  the  rustic  crowd  had  duly  inspected 
the  elephant  and  the  hyenas,  and  were  seated  round 
the  arena  eagerly  awaiting  the  entrance  of  the  clown 
and  the  bareback  rider,  he  rushed  into  the  ring,  wav- 
ing his  hat,  and  shouting :  "  Ladies  and  gentlemen, 
save  yourselves  !  The  Gy-as-cutus  has  broke  loose  ! !  " 
Dire  was  the  panic  that  followed  ;  numerous  the  bruises 
and  scratches;  appalling  the  damage  to  bonnets  and 
draperies;  but  the  tent  was  emptied  at  last,  and  the 
farmers  and  their  wives  and  daughters  were  jogging 
homeward  and  congratulating  each  other  on  their  es- 
cape, when  it  occurred  to  some  of  them  to  ask  :  "  What 
is  a  gyascutus,  anyway?" 

(3) 


4  THAT  MONSTER,   THE  HIGHER  CRITIC. 

The  story  very  well  illustrates  one  aspect  of  the 
popular  attitude  towards  Biblical  criticism.  Upon  the 
settled  faith  and  tranquil  content  of  a  large  body  of 
Christians,  breaks  the  cry,  "  The  higher  criticism  has 
broken  loose ! "  It  is  charging,  head  on,  with  smoking 
nostrils,  against  the  Bible  !  It  means  destruction  to  the 
faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints.  Meanwhile  few  stop 
to  ask,  "What  is  higher  criticism,  anyway?"  The 
majority  run ;  that  is,  they  evade  the  question  with 
some  such  irrelevant  platitude  as  u  The  old  Bible  is  good 
enough  for  me."  A  few  more  determined  souls,  never 
for  a  moment  doubting  that  higher  criticism,  whatever 
it  may  mean,  is  something  deadly,  "  set  the  teeth  and 
stretch  the  nostril  wide,"  and  solemnly  affirm  that 
Higher  Criticism  must  be  exterminated  and  the  higher 
critics  suppressed. 

Might  it  not  be  worth  while  to  ask  whether  there  is 
any  reasonable  ground  for  this  panic?  u  What  is  the 
gyascutus  ? "  If  we  must  fight  a  wild  beast  it  is  a  great 
advantage  to  know  the  nature  and  the  habits  of  the  ani- 
mal,  and  whether  he  can  do  all  the  damage  of  which  he  is 
said  to  be  capable.  It  is  said  that  the  devil,  in  the  form 
of  an  ox,  once  met  Cuvier,  the  naturalist,  and  threatened 
to  eat  him  up,  whereupon  Cuvier  replied,  "  Can't  do 
it:  graminivorous!"  It  might  possibly  appear,  on  a 
closer  inquiry,  that  the  Higher  Criticism  is  not,  on  the 
whole,  an  evily  disposed  beast.  It  might  possibly  ap- 
pear, incredible  as  it  may  seem,  that  he  delights  to 
browse  in  the  green  pastures  of  the  Word,  and  to  drink 
of  the  still  waters  of  Siloa's  brook.  It  might  be  found 
quite  unnecessary  to  chain  or  to  muzzle  him,  even  in 
the  dooryards  of  the  defenders  of  the  faith. 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  5 

THE    POPULAR    IMPRESSION     OF    BIBLICAL     CRITICISM    AND 
HOW   IT    IS    FOSTERED. 

If  we  try  to  define  the  impression  which  largely 
prevails  concerning  Biblical  criticism,  we  find  that  it 
is  substantially  this  :  that  criticism  of  the  Bible  means 
picking  flaws  in  the  Bible.  Criticism,  in  the  popular 
vocabulary,  is  synonymous  with  fault-finding,  an  utter- 
ly mistaken  and  one-sided  conception.  Again  :  that 
criticism  of  the  Bible  implies  distrust  of  the  Bible,  or 
positive  hostility  to  the  Bible  :  that  Biblical  criticism  is 
allied  to  infidelity  :  that  a  Biblical  critic  is  a  presump- 
tuous intruder  upon  holy  ground,  an  ungodly  agitator, 
who  is  bent  on  undermining  the  sacredness  and  author- 
ity of  Holy  Scripture :  that  his  function  is,  per  se, 
superfluous  and  reprehensible.  "  Why,"  it  is  asked, 
"  should  the  Bible  be  criticised  at  alii  Is  it  not  a  sacred 
book,  inspired  of  God,  an  infallible  manual,  to  be  im- 
plicitly received  and  unquestioningly  believed?  Why 
cannot  the  critics  let  the  Bible  alone  ? " 

A  few  illustrations  will  show  the  use  which  is  made 
of  this  impression  in  aggravating  the  popular  sus- 
picion. 

A  very  eminent  living  divine  was  quoted  some  time 
ago  as  saying :  "  I  see  the  divine  authorship  of  the 
Bible  as  plainly  as  I  see  the  authorship  of  the  stars ; 
....  and  when  the  critics  pick  away  at  the  Bible, 
1  say,  'Well,  it  is  no  great  matter;  if  it  gratifies 
them  it  does  not  hurt  me.  As  long  as  all  the  universi- 
ties in  the  world  combined  are  not  able  to  make  another 
Bible  that  shall  be  so  cosmical  in  its  range  of  appeal, 
and  so  mighty  in  its  power  over  men  and  women,  over 


6  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC. 

mind  and  heart  and  life,  and  over  the  growing  civiliza- 
tion itself  to  which  it  ministers,  I  rest  assured  that  this 
is  God's  book  and  not  man's.'  " 

This  statement  is  eloquent  and  telling.  Moreover,  it 
tells  the  truth  ;  and  jet  the  truth  is  put  in  such  a  way  as 
to  create  a  wrong  impression.  Any  Christian  scholar 
would  indorse  what  is  said  of  the  power  of  appeal  and 
the  evidence  of  divinity  residing  in  the  Bible  itself,  and 
also  the  contempt  implied  for  a  hostile,  petty,  captious 
criticism  of  the  Bible.  But  the  writer  makes  no  dis- 
tinction between  critics.  His  phrase,  "  the  critics,"  is 
sweeping,  and  the  whole  passage  implies  a  contemptu- 
ous tolerance  of  the  Biblical  critic  as  such.  I  do  not 
assert  that  the  author  meant  this ;  but  if  he  did  not, 
his  mode  of  expression  was  unguarded. 

Another  clergyman,  also  living,  stated  that  in  a  cer- 
tain theological  seminary  the  students  were  told,  in  the 
theological  lecture-room,  the  truth  about  the  divine  in- 
spiration and  authority  of  the  Scriptures ;  but  that  on 
coming  under  the  hands  of  the  New  Testament  pro- 
fessor, they  were  told  that  it  was  doubtful  whether  the 
last  twelve  verses  of  the  second  gospel  were  written 
by  Mark. 

Now  both  these  statements  were  truthful,  and  yet 
they  were  combined  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the 
whole  statement  false :  that  is  to  say,  a  contrast  was 
made  and  emphasized  which  did  not  exist  except  in  the 
writer's  imagination.  The  impression  he  meant  to  con- 
vey was  that  sound,  orthodox  teaching  in  one  depart- 
ment was  offset  by  false  and  dangerous  criticism  in  the 
other  department.  It  was  a  cry  of  u  gyascutus!  "  The 
writer  was  holding  up  a  scarecrow.     He  may  have  be- 


THAT  MONSTER,  THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  7 

lieved  in  it,  and  have  been  as  much  scared  as  anybody, 
but  it  was  a  scarecrow  none  the  less,  and  nothing  else. 
Suppose  the  New  Testament  professor  did  say  that,  as 
he  ought  to  have  done  if  he  did  his  duty,  what  of  it? 
What  is  the  gyascutus  ?  If  the  accuser  did  not  know 
that  Biblical  students  for  years  have  observed  a  striking 
difference  between  the  diction  of  those  twelve  verses 
and  that  of  the  rest  of  the  gospel,  leading  them  to 
suspect  that  those  verses  were  by  another  hand, — he 
was  inexcusably  ignorant  of  what,  as  a  seminary  gradu- 
ate and  a  public  teacher  of  Scripture,  he  ought  to  have 
known.  Suppose  the  verses  were  by  another  hand. 
What  difference  does  it  make  ?  The  last  verses  of  John's 
gospel  are  by  another  hand  than  John's.  Moses  cer- 
tainly did  not  write  the  account  of  his  own  death  in 
Deuteronomy. 

A  certain  professor  in  another  theological  seminary 
stated  in  his  inaugural  address  that  he  had  on  his  table 
twenty-five  books  (I  think  that  was  the  number,  but  a 
few  more  or  less  makes  no  difference)  from  which  he 
had  been  trying  to  find  out  what  Higher  Criticism  is, 
and  that  he  had  been  unable  to  discover.  The  state- 
ment was  so  startling  that  a  dignitary  on  the  platform 
who  has  made  himself  conspicuous  in  the  war  against 
the  higher  critics,  declared  that  he  could  have  told  him 
that.  We  are  bound  to  believe  the  Professor's  state- 
ment, but  it  was  a  proclamation  of  his  own  ignorance 
and  a  significant  comment  upon  his  competency  as  an 
instructor  of  young  men.  Yet  he  is  one  of  the  men 
who  utters  diatribes  against  the  higher  critics,  and 
swells  the  cry,  "  The  gyascutus  has  broke  loose  ! " 

Such  illustrations  might  be  multiplied  almost  indefi- 


8  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

nitely.  Similar  utterances  come  from  pulpits,  from 
denominational  journals,  and  from  speeches  in  ecclesi- 
astical bodies.  They  all  go  to  proclaim,  not  this  or 
that  position  of  Biblical  critics,  but  the  function  of  the 
Biblical  critic,  and  the  Biblical  critic  himself  as  such, 
and  the  science  of  Biblical  criticism  for  the  most  part, 
as  things  to  be  suspected  and  kept  at  arm's  length. 

It  may  be  freely  granted,  for  the  fact  is  notorious, 
that  there  is  a  criticism  and  a  class  of  critics  hostile  to 
the  Bible.  The  equipment  of  such  critics  is,  in  many 
cases,  formidable.  They  are  ripe  scholars,  deft  and 
plausible  reasoners,  and  vigorous  thinkers.  Their  prin- 
ciples of  interpretation  are  utterly  rationalistic.  They 
deny  the  supernatural  in  the  evolution  of  Christian 
history :  their  aim  is  mainly  destructive,  and  their  con- 
clusions, if  generally  accepted,  would  practically  rob  the 
church  of  the  Bible.  But,  while  this  is  undeniable, 
how  utterly  unfair  it  is  to  make  such  critics  alone  rep- 
resentative of  Biblical  criticism :  in  other  words,  to 
throw  all  Biblical  criticism  and  all  Biblical  critics  indis- 
criminately into  one  pile,  and  to  label  the  pile  with  the 
name  of  its  worst  and  most  dangerous  element. 

THE    TERM    "HIGHER   CRITICISM." 

As  already  hinted,  the  term "  Higher  Criticism " 
awakens  special  apprehensions.  One  who  might  pos- 
sibly confront  the  name  "critic"  with  reasonable  com- 
posure, finds  the  chills  running  down  his  back  at  the 
mention  of  a  higher  critic.  He  is  a  gyascutus  of  a 
peculiarly  large,  ferocious,  and  destructive  species. 

I  am  not  aware  that  the  addition  of  the  word 
"  higher  "  materially  affects  the  state  of  the  case.    Very 


THAT   MONSTER,    THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  9 

much  more  has  been  made  out  of  that  unfortunate  ad- 
jective than  has  any  basis  in  fact.     I  certainly  have  no 
stand  to  make  for  the  term  "Higher   Criticism."     I 
might  be  disposed  to  think  it   infelicitous,  not  suffi- 
ciently explicit  or  comprehensive.     The  distinction  be- 
tween a  lower  and  a  higher  critic  is  mainly  technical. 
But  to  assume  that  because  a  term  is  not  felicitous  its 
meaning  is  therefore  indefinite,  is  nonsense,  and  is  in 
the  face  of  all  experience.     Nothing  is  more  capricious 
than  the  origin  and  application  of  names,  and  names 
stick,  and  have  a  sharp  and  definite  meaning  long  after 
the  circumstances  of  their  origin  have  been  forgotten. 
Higher  Criticism  means  simply  literary  criticism,  in- 
cluding all  literary  and  historical  questions  raised  by 
the  composition  and  contents  of  the  Biblical  writings. 
Lower  Criticism  is  textual  criticism,  embracing  all  that 
relates  to  the  restoration  of  the  Biblical  text  to  its  orig- 
inal form.     Higher  criticism  has  therefore  a  simple  and 
perfectly  definite  meaning,  understood  by  every  scholar, 
and  capable  of  being  understood  by  any  person  of  ordin- 
ary intelligence.     As  already  hinted,  a  great  deal  too 
much  has  been  made  of  the  distinction  between  lower 
and  higher  criticism,  so  that  the  distinction  has  been 
magnified  into  a  bugbear.     The  two  go  together.     A 
sound  literary  criticism  must  always  be  based  on  a  cor- 
rect text,  and  the  ideal  critic  must  always  be  both  a 
lower   and   a  higher  critic.     As  a  writer  in  the  July 
number  of  the  Contemporary  Review  justly  observes, 
"  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  why  careful  and  learned 
discussion  on  grounds  of  internal  evidence  should  be 
called  '  higher'  than  equally  careful  and  equally  learned 
discussion   on   grounds   of   external   evidence.     Both, 


10  THAT  MONSTER,   THE    HIGHER  CRITIC. 

evidently,  are  capable  of  fully  exercising  the  highest 
powers  of  the  human  mind,  though  it  is  easier  and 
cheaper  to  conduct  the  former  badly,  and  a  more  deli- 
cate and  difficult  matter  to  perform  it  well." 

Let  me  give  a  single  illustration.  A  student  reads 
the  gospel  of  Mark  in  the  original  Greek  text,  and 
carefully  observes  its  literary  peculiarities — its  diction 
and  style,  its  imagery,  its  phrasing,  how  far  its  diction 
is  affected  by  the  Hebrew  tongue  and  by  Hebrew 
moods  of  thought,  and  many  other  peculiarities.  He 
finds  in  the  history  of  Eusebius  a  quotation  from  a  very 
early  church  father,  Papias,  to  the  effect  that  Mark 
wrote  down  the  reminiscences  of  Christ's  life  as  he 
heard  them  from  Peter  in  his  preaching  or  in  private 
interviews  with  him.  This  leads  him  to  investigate  the 
genuineness  of  this  passage  of  Papias,  and  to  study  the 
writings  ascribed  to  Peter  in  the- New  Testament.  In 
these  writings  he  discovers  a  great  many  of  the  char- 
acteristics which  appear  in  Mark.  Then  he  turns  to 
the  book  of  Acts  in  which  several  of  Peter's  speeches 
are  reported,  and  which  contains  certain  narratives 
which  must  have  proceeded  from  Peter  himself,  such 
as  the  healing  of  the  cripple  at  the  Beautiful  Gate  of 
the  temple,  and  Peter's  miraculous  deliverance  from 
prison.  In  the  style  and  diction  of  these  he  finds  the 
same  characteristics  which  appear  in  Mark  and  in  the 
first  Epistle  of  Peter.  He  draws  from  these  compari- 
sons certain  important  and  interesting  conclusions ;  as, 
for  instance,  that  Papias  was  right,  that  Mark's  gospel 
contains  reminiscences  of  Christ's  life  and  sayings 
drawn  in  great  part  from  the  testimony  of  Peter,  and 
therefore  of  an  eye-witness :  that  the  first  Epistle  as- 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE    HIGHER  CRITIC.  11 

cribed  to  Peter  was  really  liis  work :  that  there  was  a 
definite  stream  of  Petrine  tradition  on  which  the  author 
of  the  Acts  drew.  That  is  one  of  the  simpler  pro- 
cesses of  Higher  Criticism,  but  it  will  serve  to  illustrate 
the  thing  itself.  It  is  a  specimen  of  hundreds  of  in- 
quiries applied  to  both  Testaments  with  a  view  to  de- 
termine on  internal  grounds  the  authorship  and  the 
history  of  the  composition  of  different  books.  No  sane 
person  imagines  that  there  is  anything  impious,  pre- 
sumptuous, heretical,  or  diabolical  in  such  processes. 


WHAT   IS    CRITICISM  5 

But  let  us  now  ask,  What  is  criticism?  since  a 
misconception  or  partial  conception  of  that  word  un- 
derlies much  of  the  popular  unrest  concerning  this 
subject. 

Its  fundamental  idea  is  separation.  It  is  derived 
from  a  Greek  verb  meaning  "  to  separate."  If  I  have 
in  a  basket  fifty  sound  apples  and  twenty  which  are 
more  or  less  rotted,  and  I  put  the  sound  apples  into 
one  pile  and  the  rotten  ones  into  another,  that  is  criti- 
cism. But  that  process  implies  judgment,  which  pro- 
nounces an  apple  sound  or  unsound.  Out  of  the  pri- 
mary meaning  of  the  Greek  word,  "  to  separate,"  grew 
the  secondary  meaning,  "to  judge,"  since  judgment 
always  implies  a  separation  of  the  true  from  the  false ; 
of  the  bad  from  the  good ;  of  reliable  evidence  from 
doubtful  evidence.  In  so  simple  a  matter  as  that  of 
the  apples,  the  process  of  judgment  is  easy.  If  one 
were  called  upon  to  decide  as  to  the  respective  quality 
of  a  dozen  diamonds,  more  knowledge  and  practised 


12  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC. 

skill  would  be  demanded  ;  and  the  sifting  of  the  evi- 
dence on  which  turns  the  life  or  the  death  of  an  ac- 
cused man  often  requires  the  highest  wisdom. 

Now  there  is  presented  to  us  a  collection  of  docu- 
ments known  as  the  New  Testament.  On  examining 
this  collection  we  find  ourselves  compelled  to  sort  out 
and  classify  and  pass  judgment  on  certain  facts  which 
attach  to  the  different  documents.  For  instance,  we 
find  that  they  have  been  composed  by  different  authors 
and  therefore  exhibit  different  characteristics.  We 
find  that  several  of  them  are  by  the  same  author,  and 
therefore  exhibit  similar  characteristics.  We  find  that 
reasons  are  assigned  for  suspecting  that  one  or  more 
of  the  documents  were  not  composed  by  the  author  to 
whom  they  have  commonly  been  ascribed.  For  ex- 
ample, we  may  hesitate,  after  weighing  the  evidence, 
to  assign  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  to  Paul,  or  the 
second  Petrine  Epistle  to  Peter. 

Again  we  find  that  there  are  two  distinct  elements 
running  through  all  the  documents  of  both  Testaments. 
One  of  these  is  elevated,  heart-searching,  prophetic — 
in  short,  divine:  the  other  betrays  the  operation  of 
human  modes  of  thought,  employs  current  forms  of 
speech  and  statements  based  on  scientific  notions 
now  obsolete;  is  marked  at  times  by  careless  writing 
or  error  of  detail — an  element  which  is  distinctly 
human. 

Similarly,  we  may  find  reason  to  inquire  whether 
certain  passages  have  not  been  inserted  in  the  orig- 
inal documents.  For  example,  is  the  story  of  the 
angel  descending  periodically  into  the  pool  of  Be- 
thesda  a  part  of  the  original  narrative,  or  is  it  a  popu- 


THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  13 

lar  legend,  originally  written  in  the  margin  by  way  of 
comment,  and  afterwards  inserted  in  the  text  by  some 
copyist  ?  Was  the  story  of  the  woman  taken  in  adul- 
tery a  part  of  John's  original  gospel  ? 

All  such  matters  force  themselves  upon  the  conscien- 
tious student.  He  cannot  evade  them.  He  must  ex- 
amine them  and  form  an  opinion  about  them.  He  must 
dravv  lines  between  the  work  of  one  author  and  the 
work  of  another ;  between  the  original  text  and  inter- 
polations ;  between  the  genuine  and  the  corrupted  text ; 
between  the  human  element  and  the  divine.  He  is  a 
critic  in  spite  of  himself.  His  criticism  is  not  the 
outcome  of  individual  caprice ;  it  is  no  diabolical  con- 
trivance deliberately  aimed  at  the  integrity  of  Scrip- 
ture. It  is  simply  the  honest  dealing  of  a  fair  and 
trained  mind  with  phenomena  which  are  patent.  These 
phenomena  are  not  imaginary,  they  are  facts  which  de- 
mand explanation. 

Criticism,  in  some  form  or  other,  begins  the  moment 
that  one  begins  to  study  his  Bible  intelligently.  No  in- 
telligent person  can  regard  the  Bible  as  one  solid  block 
of  divine  truth  of  uniform  texture  and  grain  through- 
out. Its  varieties  assert  themselves  on  the  very  sur- 
face. Its  books  belong  to  different  eras  and  have  their 
distinctive  marks.  They  have  grown  out  of  different 
local  circumstances,  and  have  been  shaped  by  them. 
The  Psalms  are  the  products  of  different  ages  and 
authors.  The  iirst  Corinthian  Epistle  grew  out  of  one 
set  of  events,  the  second  out  of  another,  and  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  out  of  another.  No  one  who 
overlooks  these  facts  can  understand  his  Bible ;  but  the 
tracing  out  and  defining  and  classifying  of  these  differ- 


14  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC. 

ences  is  criticism,  and  higher  criticism.  Criticism  is  not 
of  scholars'  making,  but  of  the  Bible's  making,  of 
God's  making. 

Suppose  a  critic  makes  a  mistake,  as  he  often  does. 
Suppose  a  critic  abuses  the  resources  of  scholarship,  and 
employs  them  to  undermine  the  sacredness  and  the  au- 
thority of  Scripture:  such  facts  do  not  make  against 
the  value  or  the  necessity  of  Biblical  criticism,  nor  ex- 
pose it  to  just  vituperation.  The  fact  that  a  man  now 
and  then  uses  an  axe  for  the  murder  of  his  neighbor, 
or  hurts  somebody  by  a  careless  stroke,  does  not  prove 
that  an  axe  is  a  bad  and  hurtful  thing.  On  such  a  mode 
of  reasoning  we  should  be  compelled  to  reject  the  Bible 
itself,  since  no  book  has  been  more  abused  or  made  the 
instrument  of  more  mischief. 

Such  things  are  rudimentary  and  self-evident  to  schol- 
ars ;  but  I  am  not  writing  for  scholars,  neither  am  I  set- 
ting up  a  man  of  straw  for  the  purpose  of  knocking 
him  down.  The  popular  objection  to  Biblical  criticism 
does  not  turn  on  the  distinction  between  Higher  and 
Lower  Criticism,  or  on  any  other  distinction  within  the 
field  of  criticism.  It  lies  against  Biblical  criticism  as  such. 
The  very  name  suggests  mischief.  Any  critic  is  an  in- 
truder on  holy  ground.  The  Bible  is  not  a  subject  for 
criticism,  and  should  be  let  alone. 

A   FALSE   ISSUE   BETWEEN    IGNORANT    PIETY    AND    INTEL- 
LIGENT   CRITICISM. 

Now  our  discussion  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  adap- 
tations of  the  Bible  to  the  lowly  and  uneducated.  That 
it  has  a  mission  to  such  no  one  thinks  of  denying.     If 


THAT   MONSTER,    THE    HIGHER  CRITIC.  15 

the  Bible  were  for  scholars  only,  it  would  be  useless  to 
a  very  large  part  of  the  world.  But  there  is  a  fearful 
amount  of  pious  platitude  in  circulation,  the  general 
drift  of  which  is  to  set  believing  ignorance  over  against 
critical  study  to  the  disparagement  of  the  latter.  The 
contrast  between  the  "  carping  critic  "  and  the  rt  hum- 
ble believer"  has  been  worn  threadbare,  and  like  many 
such  stock  phrases,  carries  with  it  a  falsehood.  For 
while  there  are  carping  critics  and  humble  believers, 
"carping"  does  not  represent  the  whole  body  of  Bibli- 
cal critics  any  more  than  "humble"  represents  the 
whole  body  of  believers.  In  many  cases  it  would  be 
much  more  to  the  point  to  contrast  the  carping  believer 
with  the  humble  critic. 

In  any  case,  the  issue  between  pious  ignorance  and 
intelligent  criticism  of  the  Scriptures  is  an  utterly  false 
issue.  While,  as  already  remarked,  the  Bible  has  the 
power,  under  the  influence  of  the  Divine  Spirit,  to  im- 
part to  the  lowly  and  the  unlearned  a  rule  and  ideal  of 
faith  and  duty,  an  incentive  to  fidelity,  and  a  comfort 
in  sorrow,  it  is  a  fair  question  how  large  a  proportion 
of  such  results  is  due  to  the  Bible  alone  without  the  in- 
tervention of  the  human  teacher.  The  Bible  never  dis- 
parages knowledge.  It  emphasizes  it  and  presses  it  on 
its  readers  as  an  object  of  diligent  search.  Whatever 
it  may  give  to  an  ignorant  faith,  it  gives  far  more 
richly  to  an  intelligent  faith.  Hence,  I  repeat,  it  is  pal- 
pably absurd  to  raise  an  issue  between  an  intelligent 
criticism  and  a  blind* and  passive  and  credulous  accept- 
ance of  Scripture,  assuming  some  special  illumination 
on  the  part  of  the  unlearned  which  puts  him  at  advan- 
tage as  against  the  scholar :  to  say  that  "  the  insight  of 


16  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER    CRITIC. 

a  saint  is  of  more  value  than  the  skill  of  a  gramma- 
rian."  That  may  be  or  may  not  be.  It  is  entirely  possi- 
ble that  an  uneducated  laborer,  firmly  grounded  in  the 
faith  of  Christ,  might  find  in  the  gospel  of  John  some- 
thing which  the  author  of  "  Supernatural  Religion  " 
could  not  discover.  None  the  less  it  remains  true  that 
there  is  that  in  Scripture  which  the  mere  insight  of  a 
saint  cannot  apprehend  or  deal  with.  There  are  cer- 
tain things  which  are  revealed  to  the  wise  and  prudent 
and  are  hidden  from  babes.  If  there  is  a  region  where 
the  saint  sees  more  and  farther  than  the  grammarian, 
there  is  also  a  region  where  the  saint  cannot  see  with- 
out the  aid  of  the  grammarian,  and  where  the  saint,  if  he 
attempts  to  play  the  role  of  interpreter  or  instructor, 
only  makes  himself  and  the  Bible  ridiculous.  It  is 
quite  true  that  "  the  natural  man  discerneth  not  the 
things  of  the  Spirit  of  God,"  and  that  "they  are  fool- 
ishness unto  him  ";  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  spiritual 
man  needs  something  more  than  spiritual  illumination 
to  enable  him  to  weigh  the  evidence  for  a  reading,  to 
correct  a  mistranslation,  or  to  settle  a  question  of  gram- 
mar, history,  or  archaeology.  The  insight  of  a  saint 
gives  little  or  no  help  in  determining  the  authenticity 
of  Second  Peter,  or  in  explaining  the  meaning  of  bap- 
tism for  the  dead,  and  of  the  woman's  having  power  on 
her  head  because  of  the  angels.  Piety,  by  itself,  is 
helpless  in  the  presence  of  such  questions.  Criticism 
alone  cannot  mount  on  textual  and  syntactical  ladders 
to  the  beatific  vision,  but  neither  is  pious  ignorance 
winged  for  that  flight. 

The  critical  spirit  and  furnishing,  balanced  by  a  gen- 
uine faith,  is  that  which  always  gets  the  best  and  the 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  17 

most  out  of  the  Bible.  To  set  these  two  against 
each  other  is  to  put  asunder  what  God  hath  joined  to- 
gether, and  grossly  to  slander  both  God  and  the  Bible. 
The  true  formula  is  not  "criticism  or  faith,"  but 
"  criticism  and  faith."  The  man  who  regards  his  Bible 
as  something  to  be  merely  received  passively  and  be- 
lieved unquestioningly,  practically  degrades  into  a 
child's  primer  the  book  which  is  adapted  to  stimulate 
and  feed  and  train  his  best  mental  and  spiritual  powers. 
It  is  true  that  some  people  never  get  beyond  the 
primer.  Let  us  by  all  means  be  thankful  for  the 
primer,  but  let  us  not  assert  that  the  primer  fills  the 
place  of  literature.  The  Bible  shows  its  divine  charac- 
ter by  inviting  and  encouraging  the  spirit  of  inquiry 
which  is  the  foundation  of  all  criticism.  How  a  man 
can  be  in  contact  with  God  in  a  book  or  anywhere  else 
and  not  ask  questions  it  is  hard  to  conceive. 

CRITICAL    TESTS    LEGITIMATE. 

Hence  nothing  can  be  more  radically  false  than  the 
position  that  the  Bible  is  above  criticism,  and  that  it  is 
the  sacred  duty  of  scholarship  to  let  it  alone :  that  it  is 
a  charmed  thing,  invested  with  a  superstitious  sanctity, 
fenced  off  from  ordinary  modes  of  investigation  and 
treatment.  That  is  a  popular  delusion  which  must  be 
effectually  dissipated  before  the  Bible  can  take  its  true 
and  high  place  in  human  thought.  Such  a  seclusion  of 
the  Bible  works  more  mischief  than  all  the  incursions 
of  the  most  rampant  and  hostile  criticism,  because 
it  belies  the  true  character  and  intent  of  the  Bible, 
which  is  most  truly  divine  in  being  so  intensely  human. 
It  has  been  evolved  under  human  conditions:  it  has 


18  THAT   MONSTER,    THE   HIGHER   CRITIC. 

developed  itself  co-ordinately  with  the  history  of  the 
church  and  out  of  it :  it  communicates  with  men  through 
ordinary  human  media :  it  uses  human  words  and  human 
figures  of  speech :  it  appeals  to  human  qualities :  it 
carries  a  revelation  given  "  by  divers  portions  and  in 
divers  manners"  through  individuals  of  different  char- 
acters, temperaments,  and  attainments:  its  inspiration 
resides  in  characters  rather  than  in  documents,  and  finds 
its  highest  expression  in  the  testimony  of  the  God-man 
Jesus  which  is  the  spirit  of  prophecy.  The  medium  of 
the  revelation  must  be  human  if  it  is  to  be  intelligible. 
If  it  is  not  intelligible  it  is  not  divine,  and  if  it  is 
human  it  must  submit  itself  to  critical  tests  such  as  are 
applied  to  other  books.  It  cannot  refuse  the  criteria 
appropriate  to  those  human  media  through  which  God 
has  chosen  to  transmit  it.  Hence  the  Bible  is  fairly 
subject  to  those  literary,  grammatical,  historical,  philo- 
logical, and  psychological  tests  which  are  applicable  to 
Homer  or  Dante  or  Shakespeare. 

On  any  other  ground  the  Bible  can  never  be  success- 
fully vindicated  in  the  eyes  of  scholarly  and  fair- 
minded  men.  They  will  say ;  It  is  all  very  well  for  the 
Bible  to  appeal  to  faith,  but  if  it  cannot  also  appeal  to 
fact,  and  sound  reason  and  common  sense,  it  is  not 
worth  fighting  over.  It  is  easy  enough  for  you  to 
prove  the  book  to  be  anything  you  claim,  provided  you 
are  allowed  to  suppress  all  testimony  save  such  as  you 
choose  to  adduce.  The  Bible  is  pre-eminently  histori- 
cal. It  professes  to  relate  facts  and  to  relate  them  in 
sequence.  If  you  refuse  to  have  those  facts  tested  by 
ordinary  historical  canons,  you  create  a  presumption  of 
intentional  falsification.     You  proclaim  yourselves  sus- 


THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  19 

picious  of  the  truth  of  Biblical  history.  The  Bible  is 
a  literary  product.  It  cannot  evade  literary  tests :  we 
laugh  at  a  claim  to  an  inspiration  which  exempts  it  from 
these  or  renders  it  superior  to  them.  The  Bible  em- 
ploys logic,  and  appeals  to  human  reason.  Let  us  test 
its  logic  by  the  rules  which  we  apply  to  Aristotle  or  to 
Bacon.  The  alternative  of  such  criticism  is  passive 
acceptance  on  authority,  and  this  we  absolutely  refuse. 
The  Bible  comes  down  into  our  homes  and  marts, 
speaking  our  language,  clothed  in  our  forms  of  thought, 
and  peremptorily  claiming  absolute  mastery.  It  utters 
commands,  and  promises  rewards,  and  threatens  penal- 
ties. If  it  has  a  divine  right  to  speak  thus,  it  condemns 
many  of  our  opinions  and  practices.  But  if  it  com. 
mands  and  threatens  and  promises  and  condemns  on 
our  ground,  it  must  vindicate  itself  on  our  ground.  It 
shall  not  be  allowed  to  throw  stones  and  launch  darts, 
and  then  retreat  behind  the  walls  of  a  supernatural 
sanctity,  declaring  that  it  will  not  have  the  temper  of 
its  mail  tried  by  our  spear-points. 

FATAL    EFFECT   OF   A   DEFENSE   OF    SCRIPTURE    ON    FALSE 
GROUNDS. 

Nothing  can  be  more  disastrous  to  truth  than  a  de- 
fense upon  false  grounds.  The  work  of  the  reverent 
critic  is  also  made  necessary  by  the  professed  friends  of 
the  Bible ;  and  the  Bible  has  suffered  more  at  the 
hands  of  these  than  from  its  declared  enemies. 

Nothing  stands  the  enemy  of  Scripture  in  better 
stead  than  to  have  its  friends  and  defenders  assume  un- 
tenable ground :  to  make  claims  for  it  which  have  no 
foundation  in  fact;   for  thus  the  true  issues  are  con- 


20  THAT    MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

eealed ;  the  real  danger  to  the  enemy  is  evaded ;  the 
conflict  is  shifted  to  ground  where  the  assailant  has  a 
real  advantage,  and  which  the  defenders  themselves 
have  furnished  him. 

For  example,  a  challenger  of  the  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture is  met  with  the  sweeping  assertion  that  the  Bible 
is  authoritative  because  every  word  and  line  nas  been 
so  directly  and  infallibly  inspired  by  God  as  to  make 
it  without  error  of  any  kind,  verbal  or  historical. 
As  a  fact,  the  authority  of  the  Bible  does  not  rest  upon 
verbal  inerrancy,  but  upon  something  quite  different 
and  far  higher  and  more  convincing:  but  the  defender 
chooses  his  own  ground,  and  sacrifices  the  higher 
ground  for  the  inferior  and  utterly  indefensible  posi- 
tion where  the  challenger  is  only  too  glad  to  carry  on 
the  fight.  He  turns  the  position,  carries  it  by  square 
and  proved  denial.  He  confronts  the  assertion  with 
the  Bible  itself.  He  says  that  the  Bible  does  contain 
errors  of  detail,  and  he  points  them  out.  He  is  en- 
tirely right.  He  scores  a  legitimate  victory,  and  the 
defender  of  the  Bible  sustains  a  defeat  which  he  need 
not  have  suffered  if  he  had  been  wise  enough  to  take 
different  and  higher  and  defensible  ground.  The  case 
is  all  the  worse  when  the  representatives  of  a  great 
Christian  body,  in  council  assembled,  plant  themselves 
upon  this  position,  asserting  the  dogma  of  verbal  in- 
errancy, and  insisting  that  the  teachers  of  the  church 
shall  accept  and  proclaim  it  under  penalty  of  dis- 
franchisement. In  registering  for  themselves  an  im- 
agined triumph,  they  register  for  themselves  a  crush- 
ing defeat,  a  verdict  which  a  better  educated  sense  of 
the  character  and  claims  of  Scripture  is  certain  to  re- 


THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  21 

verse  within  no  long  time.  Meanwhile  there  is  rejoic- 
ing in  the  tents  of  the  enemy.  The  church  has  delib- 
erately selected  a  position  where  his  batteries  can  rake 
it.  It  has  arrayed  its  own  scholarship  against  itself :  it 
has  brought  down  on  itself  the  indignation  of  its  most 
intelligent  and  fair-minded  members,  and  has  sensibly 
weakened  its  hold  on  their  loyalty.  It  has  solemnly 
committed  hari-kari  before  a  sneering  crowd  of  atheists 
and  rationalists. 

SOUND     CRITICISM    DEMANDED    BY    THE    EXTENSIVE     PER- 
VERSION  OF    SCRIPTURE. 

This  is  only  one  of  hundreds  of  illustrations  which 
show  the  mischief  wrought  by  the  assumption  of  false 
positions  by  the  defenders  of  Scripture.  A  true  and 
sound  criticism  is  imperatively  demanded  at  this  point, 
a  constructive  criticism,  to  set  forth  what  the  Bible 
really  is,  and  what  the  Bible  really  says.  Thoughtful 
Bible-readers  would  be  more  awake  to  this  necessity  if 
they  could  be  made  to  see  how  terribly  the  Bible  has 
been  overlaid  and  obscured  and  twisted  and  misread 
throughout  the  entire  history  of  the  church.  It  is  one 
of  the  most  disheartening  and  humiliating  records  in 
the  history  of  religion.  Some  one  once  said  of  the 
Dutch  people  that  a  sufficient  proof  of  their  greatness 
lay  in  the  fact  that  they  were  above  water  at  all ;  and 
it  might  with  equal  truthfulness  be  said  that  one  of  the 
strongest  evidences  of  the  divine  origin  and  quality  of 
the  Bible  is  its  survival  of  its  expounders.  It  has  suf- 
fered more  from  its  friends  than  from'  its  enemies. 
The  great,  distinctive  fact  which,  along  with  much 
that  is  reverent,  earnest,  and  scholarly,  marks  the  his- 


22  THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

tory  of  Biblical  exegesis  down  to  the  Reformation  pe- 
riod, and  which  reasserts  itself  subsequently, — is  the 
practical  rejection  of  the  actual  Bible,  and  the  persist- 
ent effort  to  run  it  into  the  moulds  of  tradition,  mysti- 
cism, philosophical  speculation,  scholasticism,  and  eccle- 
siastical dogma.  This  is  no  loose  assertion.  It  is  a 
matter  of  historical  fact  which  any  competent  student 
can  verify  for  himself,  and  it  is  by  no  means  a  thing  of 
the  past  only. 

The  Bible  has  been  practically  turned  against  itself. 
It  has  furnished  ideas  which  men  have  developed  after 
their  own  fashion  and  to  serve  their  own  ends,  insisting 
that  the  Bible  was  constructed  after  that  fashion  and 
for  those  ends.  The  Bible  has  been  cited  in  justifica- 
tion of  every  conceivable  monstrosity  of  speculation, 
of  every  theological  nightmare,  of  every  refinement  of 
cruelty,  of  every  whim  of  crank  or  fanatic,  of  every 
ghastly  moral  or  religious  hobby  which  has  disfigured 
Christian  history. 

"  The  Devil  can  quote  Scripture  for  his  purpose." 

— "in  religion 
What  damned  error  but  some  sober  brow 
"Will  bless  it  and  approve  it  with  a  text, 
Hiding  its  grossness  with  fair  ornament." 

The  Jewish  translators  of  the  Old  Testament,  about 
three  hundred  years  before  Christ,  whose  Greek  trans- 
lation was  the  Bible  of  Christ's  and  Paul's  times, 
garbled  the  original  Scripture  in  order  to  make  it  more 
acceptable  to  Gentile  readers,  and  to  conceal  its  blows 
at  their  own  national  conceit.  They  inserted  rabbini- 
cal legends,  they  struck  out  or  changed  passages  which 


THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  23 

reflected  upon  the  character  of  Jewish  heroes  or  ex- 
posed the  moral  delinquencies  of  their  ancestors. 

In  the  days  of  Christ  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures 
were  so  overloaded  with  the  enormous  mass  of  rabbinic 
interpretation  and  comment,  that  the  law  itself  was  su- 
perseded and  despised.  The  plainest  sayings  of  Scrip- 
ture were  resolved  into  another  sense,  and  it  was  de- 
clared by  one  of  the  Rabbis  that  he  who  renders  a 
verse  of  Scripture  as  it  appears,  says  what  is  not  true. 
It  was  assumed  that  the  Pentateuch  was  a  continuous 
enigma,  and  that  a  meaning  was  to  be  found  in  every 
monosyllable,  and  a  mystic  sense  in  every  hook  and  flour- 
ish of  the  letters.  Jesus  was  literally  justified  in  say- 
ing, "Thus  have  ye  made  the  commandment  of  God  of 
none  effect  through  your  tradition." 

In  the  succeeding  period  Scripture  suffered  at  the 
hands  of  allegorical  interpretation,  by  which  the  law  of 
Moses  and  the  histories  of  Scripture  became  well-nigh 
unrecognizable.  Genesis  was  declared  to  be  a  system 
of  psychology  and  ethics,  and  the  different  individuals 
who  figure  in  that  book — Abraham,  Sarah,  Jacob, — 
denote  different  states  of  the  soul.  The  Church 
Fathers — Irenseus,  Tertullian,  Clement  of  Alexan- 
dria, Origen — alter,  misquote,  introduce  Jewish  leg- 
ends, and  resolve  the  plainest  statements  and  narrations 
into  allegory.  Anything  which  Origen  thought  could 
not  be  literally  true,  such  as  the  stories  of  Noah's 
drunkenness  and  Lot's  incest,  any  Old  Testament  pre- 
cept which  seemed  to  him  unjust,  he  interpreted  in  a 
mystical  sense. 

In  the  period  from  the  seventh  to  the  twelfth  cen- 
turv,  the  church  claimed  to  be  the  sole  infallible  inter- 


24  THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

preter  of  Scripture,  and  treated  the  study  of  the  orig- 
inal tongues  as  little  better  than  a  crime.  In  the  scho- 
lastic era,  the  Bible  served  as  the  handmaid  of  Aris- 
totle. We  are  suffering  to-day  from  the  new  scholasti- 
cism of  the  post-Reformation  era,  built  on  party  creeds, 
and  fettering  and  emasculating  a  sound  exegesis  by  an 
arbitrary  and  dictatorial  confessionalism.  The  seven- 
teenth century  formulas  identified  inspiration  with  me- 
chanical, literal,  verbal  infallibility  ;  called  the  writers 
of  Scripture  "  amanuenses  of  God,"  "  hands  of  Christ," 
"scribes  and  notaries  of  the  Holy  Spirit,"  "living  and 
writing  pens."  It  was  asserted  formally  that  the  very 
vowel-points  and  accents  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  were 
divinely  inspired,  an  assertion  which  was  substantially 
reiterated  in  the  presence  of  the  New  York  Presbytery 
by  one  of  the  prosecutors  of  Dr.  Briggs. 

Time  and  space  would  alike  fail  to  depict  what  the 
Bible  has  endured  at  the  hands  of  popular  expounders, 
half-trained  or  untrained,  in  sensational  sermons,  in 
motto-texts,  in  expositions,  the  atrocities  of  which  would 
fill  volumes,  in  which  the  preacher  may  be  seen  "  rid- 
ing furiously,"  Jehu-like,  across  country,  some  rampant 
fancy  of  his  own.  There  is  too  much  truth  in  the  re- 
mark of  a  living  scholar,  that  "  preachers  have  become 
privileged  misinterpreters." 

The  foregoing  is  only  a  slight  and  imperfect  sketch. 
The  details  are  innumerable,  and  are  frightful  to  any 
sincere  lover  of  the  Bible.  They  prove,  however,  the 
imperative  need  of  a  sound,  devout,  scholarly,  cour- 
ageous, searching  criticism  applied  to  restore  to  the 
church  the  Bible  as  it  is.  They  go  to  show  that  the 
best  modern  criticism  is  a   new  Protestantism  which 


THAT   MONSTER,    THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  25 

faces  the  real  Bible  and  labors  to  clear  away  the 
mountains  of  trash  under  which  church  councils,  theo- 
logical systems,  and  individual  conceits  have  buried 
it.  It  is  high  time  that  a  new  face  should  be  put 
on  this  matter;  that  the  true  critic  should  be  recog- 
nized as  a  restorer  and  not  as  a  destroyer :  not  as  the 
impostor  in  the  Arabian  story,  going  about  and  offer- 
ing to  give  new  lamps  for  old  ones,  but  as  the  true 
magician,  holding  up  in  the  face  of  the  dogmatists, 
pulpit  mountebanks,  false  interpreters,  packed  councils, 
and  heresy  hunters  of  all  ages,  past  and  present,  the 
old  Word,  which  "  is  a  lamp  unto  the  feet  and  a  light 
unto  the  path." 

"  THE    OLD    BIBLE    IS    GOOD    ENOUGH    FOR   ME." 

We  often  hear  it  said :  "  The  old  Bible  is  good 
enough  for  me  ;  "  and  the  phrase  carries  with  it  a  savor 
of  mingled  pathos,  piety,  and  humility  which  is  very 
captivating  to  an  untrained  sense.  The  old  Bible  is 
good  enough  for  you  !  So  it  ought  to  be  good  enough 
for  you  or  for  any  one  else.  But  you  mean  by  the 
"  old  Bible  "  the  Bible  with  a  multitude  of  perver- 
sions, false  interpretations,  false  applications,  false  theo- 
ries of  its  origin  and  purpose  sticking  to  it  and  encrust- 
ing it  like  so  many  barnacles.  When  you  say  that  the 
old  Bible  is  good  enough  for  you,  you  mean  that  you 
would  rather  have  the  barnacled  Bible  than  the  pure 
original.  You  mean  that  you  do  not  want  the  barna- 
cles disturbed ;  and  that  you  regard  any  attempt  upon 
the  barnacles  as  impertinent  presumption.  You  mean 
that  you  are  too  indolent  or  too  ignorant  to  face  and 
examine  the  results  of  scholarly  criticism,  and  that  you 


26  THAT  MONSTER,   THE  HIGHER  CRITIC. 

resent  the  intrusion  upon  your  indolence  and  the  ex- 
posure of  your  ignorance.  You  strike  at  the  men  who 
come  to  give  you  the  real  thing  which  you  affect 
to  prize.  You  call  them  hard  names  and  drive  them 
from  your  fellowship;  and  you  probably  think  that  you 
are  doing  this  in  the  interest  of  Christian  peace  and 
truth.  You  are  terribly  deceived.  You  do  not  want 
the  old  Bible  ;  but  the  Bible  of  the  schools,  of  the  alle- 
gorists,  of  the  scholastic  theologians,  of  the  sensational 
preachers.     The  old  Bible  is  not  good  enough  for  you. 

IS    THE    HIGHER    CRITIC   A    RESTORER? 

But  is  it  true,  can  it  be  shown  to  be  true  that  the 
higher  critic  is  a  restorer  and  not  a  destroyer?  Can 
any  real  advance  in  Biblical  knowledge,  any  substantial 
helps  to  Biblical  interpretation,  any  sounder  theories  of 
interpretation,  any  new  light  upon  the  historical  rela- 
tions of  Scripture,  any  effective  vindication  of  assailed 
books  of  either  Testament  be  pointed  out  as  the  work 
of  the  higher  critics  ?  In  reply  it  may  be  said,  sum- 
marily, that  nearly  every  real  advance  in  the  methods 
of  Biblical  study,  and  nearly  every  most  solid  and  im- 
portant contribution  to  both  the  interpretation  and  the 
defence  of  Scripture  in  the  last  century,  is  due  to  higher 
criticism.  In  the  bitter,  unchristian,  and  utterly  undis- 
criminating  attack  upon  the  higher  Biblical  criticism, 
many  of  the  leaders  and  promoters  of  that  attack  have 
been  like  a  man  who  is  living  on  the  riches  of  his  bene- 
factor and  endeavoring  to  poison  him  at  the  same  time. 
For  they  are  using  freely  in  their  defences  of  the  faith, 
in  their  homilies,  in  their  Bible-classes,  in  their  written 
articles,  results  which  have  been  won  for  them  by  the 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  27 

higher  critics.  The  pulpits  generally  throughout  the 
country  are  to-day  dispensing  arguments  and  statements 
and  defences  founded  upon  the  results  of  higher  criti- 
cism. And  if  one  were  disposed  to  turn  the  tables  and 
to  enter  upon  heresy-hunting,  he  might  easily  iind 
grounds  for  a  most  edifying  array  of  presentations  to 
ecclesiastical  courts,  in  the  books  which  perhaps  the  ma- 
jority of  their  members  are  using,  and  which  some  of 
them  are  publicly  recommending.  Let  any  one,  for 
example,  study  Funk  and  Wagnalls'  advertising  circu- 
lar of  Meyer's  Commentary,  and  note  the  authors  of 
the  numerous  hearty  indorsements  which  appear  therein. 
And  yet  Dr.  Meyer  never  hesitates  to  say  that  a  .New 
Testament  writer  has  made  a  mistake.  He  denies  the 
authenticity  of  Matthew's  gospel  and  of  the  Pastoral 
Epistles,  and  resolves  into  poetical  legend  Luke's  story 
of  the  infancy  of  Jesus. 

If  these  gentlemen,  in  short,  could  succeed  in  elim- 
inating from  the  Biblical  literature  and  the  Biblical  teach- 
ing of  this  day  all  the  results  of  the  higher  criticism, 
they  would  spoil  most  of  their  own  "  crack"  sermons, 
besides  putting  back  Biblical  knowledge  two  centuries 
at  least. 

HIGHER    CRITICISM   NO   NOVELTY. 

It  possibly  needs  to  be  said  that  higher  criticism  is 
no  new  thing.  There  is,  I  believe,  an  impression  on 
some  minds  that  it  is  a  "brand  new"  invention.  If 
some  of  its  assailants  had  read  a  little  more  widely,  they 
would  have  discovered  that  many  of  the  matters  which 
they  are  treating  as  obnoxious  novelties  had  been  dis- 
cussed before  they  were  born,  and  that  some  of  the 
conclusions  which  they  are  busily  denouncing  as  horn- 


28  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC. 

ble  and  heretical  have  long  been  accepted  facts  in  the 
churches  of  England  and  of  Germany.  There  is  still  a 
disposition  in  orthodox  circles  to  suspect  everything  on 
Biblical  or  theological  topics  which  issues  from  Ger- 
many. "  German  rationalism"  is  a  cant  phrase  in  the 
mouths  of  many  who  use  it  with  only  the  vaguest  sense 
of  its  meaning.  Over  forty  years  ago  Henry  B.  Smith 
caustically  remarked  that  "the  indiscriminate  censure 
of  all  that  is  German,  or  that  may  be  so  called,  is  a  sign 
rather  of  the  power  of  prejudice  than  of  a  rational  love 
for  all  truth." 

WHAT   IS    DUE   TO   GERMANY. 

It  may  be  freely  granted  that  Germany  has  evolved 
some  theological  and  philosophical  monstrosities,  which 
is  not  altogether  strange  in  view  of  the  titanic  struggle 
through  which  her  faith  has  passed,  and  from  which  it 
has  not  yet  wholly  emerged.  Yet  it  remains  true  that 
no  nation  of  Christendom  has  equalled  Germany  in 
the  amount  and  value  of  its  contributions  to  the  accu- 
rate knowledge  and  sound  interpretation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. To  Germany  are  due  the  most  important  and 
decisive  vindications  of  the  New  Testament  against  the 
assaults  of  destructive  criticism. 

Let  us  look  at  a  few  instances.  Ferdinand  Christian 
Baur  died  in  1860.  He  was  a  man  of  immense  learn- 
ing, wonderful  historic  grasp,  and  great  controversial 
acuteness.  His  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment writings  struck  at  the  historic  roots  of  at  least 
two-thirds  of  them.  It  involved  the  rejection  of  the 
four  Gospels  and  of  the  Acts,  and  the  spuriousness  of 
all  but  four  of  the  Pauline  Epistles.     It  assumed  that 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  29 

the  primitive  church  was  divided  into  two  antagonistic 
parties  represented  respectively  bj  Peter  and  by  Paul, 
Peter  standing  for  the  primitive  orthodoxy,  and  Paul 
being  regarded  as  an  innovator  and  a  heretic ;  and  that 
the  Book  of  Revelation  was  a  veiled  attack  on  Paul 
and  his  followers.  Most  of  the  New  Testament  writ- 
ings were  composed  either  in  the  interest  of  one  of 
these  two  parties  or  with  a  view  to  reconcile  them. 

This  theory,  maintained  with  great  learning  and  in- 
genuity, became  the  nucleus  of  a  school  in  Germany, 
and  exerted  some  influence  in  England ;  but  its  main 
positions  were  successfully  refuted,  and  are  generally 
abandoned  even  in  Germany.  They  were  stormed  and 
carried  by  higher  critics — by  the  school  of  Schleier- 
macher,  by  Bleek,  Ewald,  Meyer,  and  Ritschl.  None 
the  less  Baur  rendered  a  vast  and  permanent  service  to 
sound  Biblical  criticism  and  to  New  Testament  study 
by  his  development  of  the  principle  of  historic  as  distin- 
guished from  literary  criticism,  the  principle  that  a  New 
Testament  book  must  be  studied  in  the  light  of  its  his- 
torical setting.  This  principle  is  now  universally  ac- 
cepted by  all  critical  schools  as  the  true  basis  of  New 
Testament  study,  and  has  had  a  large  influence  in  placing 
the  New  Testament  books  on  a  firmer  and  more  defen- 
sible foundation  in  the  minds  of  Christian  scholars. 

Strauss,  in  1835,  resolved  the  gospel  narrative  into  a 
poetical  fiction.  His  fundamental  principle  was  that 
nothing  which  is  supernatural  can  be  historical.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  an  iucarnation,  and  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  is  "  a  world-historical  humbug."  The  issue, 
pressed  home  by  his  telling  style  and  penetrating  criti- 
cism, was  the  issue  between  a  real  Christ  and  a  mythi- 


30  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC. 

cal  dream.  There  was  no  god-man  as  a  person.  All 
that  we  have  is  a  Christ-idea,  the  result  of  the  Jewish 
belief  that  the  Messiah  would  work  miracles,  and  of 
the  persuasion  of  Jesus'  disciples  that  he  was  that  Mes- 
siah. The  "  Life  of  Jesus  "  aroused  a  tempest  in  Ger- 
many, and  its  positions  found  adherents  in  both  Eng- 
land and  America.  Some  hints  of  its  influence  upon 
the  younger  minds  of  England  may  be  found  in  that 
delightful  book  by  Henry  Rogers,  "The  Eclipse  of 
Faith."  To-day  Strauss'  mythical  theory  is  as  dead  as 
himself,  thanks  to  the  higher  critics.  It  fell  under  the 
lire  of  Ullmann,  Tholuck,  and  Neander.  Neander's 
"Life  of  Jesus"  was  the  answer  to  Strauss'.  McClin- 
tock  translated  this  for  American  readers,  and  later, 
Dr.  George  Fisher,  of  New  Haven,  another  higher 
critic,  effectively  exposed  the  fallacies  of  Strauss. 

Numerous  attempts  have  been  made  to  assign  the 
composition  of  our  gospels  to  a  late  date.  Baur,  for 
example,  placed  the  fourth  Gospel  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  second  century.  This  question  is  forced  upon 
every  candid  student  of  the  New  Testament,  "  When 
were  our  gospels  written  ? "  since  we  are  dealing  with 
adversaries  who  are  bent  on  showing  that  the  gospels 
were  composed  at  least  a  hundred  years  after  the  events 
which  they  relate.  This,  of  course,  eliminates  the  tes- 
timony of  eye-witnesses,  and  weakens  the  credibility  of 
all  stories  of  miracles.  In  1874  appeared  in  England 
the  first  volume  of  a  book  entitled  "  Supernatural  Re- 
ligion," by  an  anonymous  author.  Two  more  volumes 
followed.  The  work  passed  through  several  editions, 
and  was  trumpeted  by  the  English  press  as  the  most 
dangerous  and  powerful  attack  ever  made  upon  the 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  31 

New  Testament.  It  was  a  dangerous  book  to  that 
class  of  students  who  are  easily  moved  by  daring  asser- 
tions and  by  a  parade  of  learning.  The  author  aimed 
to  show  that  there  cannot  be  found  a  single  distinct 
trace  of  any  of  the  first  three  gospels  except  the  third, 
during  the  first  century  and  a  half  after  Christ's  death. 
Canon  Joseph  B.  Lightfoot,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Dur- 
ham, effectively  pricked  this  bladder  in  a  series  of 
papers  in  the  Contemporary  Review.  Bringing  to  the 
task  a  learning  far  larger  than  that  of  the  anonymous 
author,  with  a  dignified  courtesy,  but  with  merciless 
severity,  he  exposed  the  shallowness  of  his  pretentious 
scholarship,  and  the  weakness  of  his  positions,  and  the 
book  fell  from  his  hands  in  a  state  of  collapse.  Bishop 
Lightfoot  was  a  higher  critic  of  the  very  first  rank, 
and  an  earnest  minister  of  the  gospel,  against  whose 
piety  and  devotion  to  his  calling  no  voice  was  ever 
raised.  His  four  remarkable  commentaries  on  Gala- 
tians,  Colossians,  Philemon,  and  Philippians,  crowded 
with  the  processes  and  results  of  the  higher  criticism, 
are  in  the  libraries  of  thousands  of  ministers  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic,  and  furnish  sermon-material  for 
hundreds  of  the  men  who  are  declaiming  against  the 
higher  critics  and  their  works;  while  his  wonderful 
volumes  on  the  Apostolic  Fathers,  the  last  work  of  his 
life,  deal  with  some  of  the  most  complicated  problems 
of  early  church  history,  and  furnish  important  links  in 
the  chain  of  testimony  which  connects  our  gospels  with 
the  apostolic  age. 

But  perhaps  none  of  the  services  of  the  higher  criti- 
cism surpass  in  value  the  vindication  of  the  fourth  gos- 
pel against  the  attempts  to  assign  it  to  another  author 


32  THAT  MONSTER,  THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

and  to  a  later  date.  The  light  over  this  gospel  has  raged 
furiously  since  the  attack  inaugurated  by  Bretschneider 
in  1820.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  question  is  finally 
closed,  nor  that  all  its  difficulties,  some  of  which  are 
serious,  are  satisfactorily  disposed  of.  But  while, 
twenty-five  years  ago,  critical  scholars  would  probably 
have  admitted  that  the  external  evidence  in  the  case  of 
John's  gospel  was  weaker  than  that  in  favor  of  the  other 
three — they  would  say  to-day  that  the  external  evidence 
for  John's  gospel  is  at  least  equal  in  amount  and  strength 
to  the  evidence  for  the  synoptic  gospels,  and  not  a  few 
would  assert  that,  externally,  that  gospel  is  the  best  at- 
tested of  the  four.  The  development  and  marshalling 
of  this  vast  and  imposing  array  of  testimony  to  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  fourth  gospel  is  due  exclusively  to  the 
higher  critics,  and,  very  largely,  to  German  critics. 
The  church  throughout  the  world  owes  an  enormous 
debt  to  Neander,  Bleek,  Schleiermacher,  Tholuck,  Lut- 
hardt,  Weiss,  and  Paul  Ewald  in  Germany ;  to  Godet 
in  Switzerland  ;  to  de  Presensee  in  France ;  to  West- 
cott,  Liddon,  Lightfoot,  and  Sanday  in  England,  and 
to  Norton  and  Ezra  Abbot  in  America.  At  one  time, 
indeed,  the  school  of  Schleiermacher  carried  their  en- 
thusiasm for  the  fourth  gospel  to  such  an  extent  as 
practically  to  disparage  the  other  gospels  in  com- 
parison. 

WHAT   IS    THE    REAL     ISSUE? 

These  illustrations  will  suffice.  They  cover  points 
of  vital  interest  to  every  lover  of  the  Bible,  and  might 
easily  be  multiplied.  They  settle  the  question  at 
issue.  That  question  is  not  whether  higher  critics 
have   not   often    assailed    the   integrity   of   Scripture: 


THAT    MONSTER,    THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  33 

not  whether  devout  critics  have  not  made  mistakes, 
but  whether  these  assaults  and  these  mistakes  are 
to  be  taken  as  representative  of  Higher  Criticism,  and 
whether  Higher  Criticism  as  such  is  to  be  branded 
as  suspicious,  condemned  en  masse,  or  superciliously 
whistled  down  the  wind  as  beneath  the  notice  of  ortho- 
doxy. Whistling  is  a  cheap  and  painfully  common  ac- 
complishment, and  does  not  imply  exceptional  musical 
endowment  or  attainment.  Before  this  sweeping,  un- 
discriminating  verdict  is  accepted,  it  might  be  well  to 
inquire  into  the  qualifications  of  the  jury. 

The  question,  again,  is  whether  the  higher  critic  is 
an  intruder  on  Biblical  ground :  whether,  apart  from 
his  personal  attitude,  his  function  is  contemptible,  su- 
perfluous, and  dangerous.  To  this  question  the  history 
of  Biblical  research  utters  an  emphatic  No !  To  pro- 
claim the  higher  critic,  as  such,  the  enemy  and  the 
assailant  of  the  Bible,  and  the  higher  criticism  as  only 
rationalistic  and  shallow,  is  to  proclaim  what  is  radi- 
cally false,  and  grossly  unfair.  Let  it  be  plainly 
understood  that  tne  learning  and  the  scholarship  are 
on  the  side  of  the  higher  criticism  and  not  of  its 
maligners :  that  the  higher  criticism  is  represented  by 
men  both  in  England,  Germany,  and  America,  whose 
attainments,  position,,  and  reputation  are  of  the  highest 
order,  and  whose  piety  is  equal  to  their  learning. 
The  attempt  to  class  as  enemies  of  the  Bible  such 
higher  critics  as  Schleiermacher,  Tholuck,  Neander, 
Meyer,  Weiss,  Eitschl  in  Germany ;  Westcott,  Light- 
foot,  Sanday,  Salmon  in  England,  and  Abbot  and 
Briggs  in  America,  not  to  speak  of  a  multitude  of 
others,  is  an  attempt  which  must  simply  recoil  upon 


34  THAT   MONSTER,   THE    HIGHER   CRITIC. 

its  authors.  The  work  of  these  men  speaks  for  itself. 
It  is  not  free  from  error,  as  no  human  work  is.  That 
it  has  struck  hard  at  certain  accepted  traditions, 
that  it  has  shaken  some  strongly-rooted  conclusions, 
that  it  has  converted  into  open  questions  certain  things 
which  had  been  accepted  as  axioms,  that  it  has  com- 
pelled students  to  approach  the  Bible  from  other  sides, 
and  to  study  it  under  new  conditions — is  all  true,  and 
happily  true.  But  its  weight  has  been  steadily  on  the 
side  of  the  divine  authority,  sacredness,  and  right-reason- 
ableness of  Scripture.  The  patient  and  self-denying 
toil  of  these  men,  often  traversing  dreary,  arid  wastes 
of  an  obsolete  literature  for  the  verification  of  a  single 
fact,  tracing  historical  rootlets  amid  the  accumulated 
rubbish  of  centuries  down  to  their  vanishing  point, 
rummaging  tombs  and  monasteries  for  manuscripts, 
bringing  to  light  the  buried  words  of  palimpsests  by 
the  aid  of  chemistry,  bravely  confronting  the  numerous 
difficulties  and  complications  of  different  families  of 
manuscripts  in  order  to  get  back  to  the  original  text — 
these  things  are  an  honor  to  Christianity.  These  are 
not  mere  loose  and  general  statements.  Pages  might 
easily  be  filled  with  the  proofs.  Witness  the  work  of 
Tischendorf  and  Tregelles,  of  Westcott  and  Hort  and 
Scrivener  on  the  New  Testament  Text.  Witness  the  dis- 
covery and  publication  of  the  Sinaitic  Codex.  Witness 
the  recovery  of  Tatian's  Diatessaron  and  the  accom- 
panying labors  of  Moesinger,  Zahn,  Ciasca  and  others. 
Witness  the  recovery  of  the  Apology  of  Aristides,  of 
the  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  of  the  Gospel 
and  Apocalypse  of  Peter,  and  the  numerous  careful 
and  critical  discussions  of   their  bearing   on  the  evi- 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  35 

dence  for  the  early  existence  and  authority  of  the 
gospels. 

What  have  the  assailants  and  insulters  of  the  higher 
critics  to  show  in  comparison  ?  Let  that  comparison  be 
faced  and  pressed.  Buckle  used  to  say,  when  a  man 
was  pointed  out  to  him  as  distinguished,  "  What  has 
he  done  ? "  We  throw  down  the  challenge  to  the  men 
who  are  vilifying  the  higher  critics  as  the  enemies  of 
the  Bible:  What  have  you  done  for  the  advancement 
of  Biblical  study  ?  What  do  your  leaders  represent  ? 
Produce  your  catalogue  of  names.  Produce  their 
books,  their  researches,  their  discoveries,  and  let  us  see 
how  it  compares  with  the  work  of  the  higher  critics. 

I  have  thus  endeavored  to  show : 

That  criticism  or  higher-criticism  (I  am  not  partic- 
ular as  to  the  distinction)  is  no  intruder  upon  Biblical 
ground,  and  that  the  critic's  function  is  neither  super- 
fluous nor  contemptible. 

That  Biblical  criticism  is  engendered  by  the  very 
nature  and  structure  of  the  Bible.  That  a  sound  criti- 
cism is  made  necessary  by  the  false  positions  and  un- 
tenable claims  of  the  friends  of  the  Bible,  and  by  in- 
numerable perversions  and  misinterpretations  both  of 
its  character  and  of  its  substance. 

That  it  is  the  aim  of  the  true  critic,  instead  of 
weakening  confidence  in  the  Bible,  to  lodge  it  more 
firmly  and  deeply  in  the  faith  of  the  church,  by  culti- 
vating just  conceptions  of  its  character  and  intent,  and 
by  letting  it  speak  for  itself. 

That  the  principal  advances  in  Biblical  knowledge 
and  in  the  methods  of  Biblical  study,  are  due  mainly 
to  the  work  of  critics,  and  of  higher  critics. 


36  THAT    MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

That  the  admission  of  the  existence  and  work  of  hos- 
tile criticism  and  of  the  errors  of  devout  criticism  in  no 
way  makes  against  the  value  and  necessity  of  Biblical 
criticism  itself :  and  that  to  represent  criticism  merely 
by  its  errors  and  abuses  is  both  uncandid  and  unjust. 

halt  ! 

It  is  about  time  to  call  a  halt.  If  we  cannot  have 
charity,  we  must  strike  for  justice.  The  holders  of  tra- 
ditional views  of  Scripture  have  their  rights  which  no 
one  disputes.  They  have  the  right  to  hold  and  the 
right  to  announce  and  to  advocate  their  views;  but  the 
exercise  of  those  rights  lays  them  open  to  fair  discus- 
sion. Scholars  of  another  type,  who  hold  that  tradi- 
tion is  not  final,  and  that  no  aspect  of  Scripture  is 
closed  against  investigation  and  critical  handling,  have 
also  their  rights,  among  which  is  exemption  from  un- 
christian abuse,  misrepresentation  and  ecclesiastical  per- 
secution when  they  differ  from  the  traditionalists. 

There  is  greatly  needed,  in  the  first  place,  a  clear, 
popular  definition  of  the  aims  of  the  higher  criticism, 
and  a  searching  exposure  of  the  attempts  to  befog  its 
true  character  and  to  identify  it  with  an  infidel  ration- 
alism. A  large  part  of  the  church  is  in  the  dark  as  to 
what  Biblical  criticism  is  and  intends,  and  as  to  its 
general  temper  and  spirit.  It  gets  its  impressions  at 
second  hand,  and  too  often  through  those  who  only  par- 
tially understand  the  subject,  or  who  are  bent  on  be- 
spattering criticism  in  the  interest  of  a  dogmatic  and 
overbearing  ecclesiasticism.  There  is  prevalent  a  false 
impression  as  to  the  bearing  of  certain  critical  con- 
clusions upon  the  inspiration   and  genuineness  of  the 


THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  37 

Bible.  The  idea  prevails  and  is  fostered,  that  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  the  singleness 
of  Isaiah,  and  the  Pauline  authorship  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  the 
integrity  and  inspiration  of  Scripture.  The  sooner 
that  impression  can  be  dissipated,  the  sooner  it  can  be 
shown  that  a  man  who  does  not  believe  that  Moses 
wrote  the  Pentateuch  is  not  denying  or  assailing  either 
the  inspiration  or  the  authority  of  the  Pentateuch — 
the  better.  The  inspiration  of  the  Pentateuch  does  not 
depend  upon  its  having  been  written  by  Moses.  The 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  no  less  remains  an  integral  and 
authoritative  part  of  the  New  Testament  if  it  be  shown 
that  Paul  did  not  write  it.  Inspiration  does  not  de- 
pend upon  authenticity.  No  one  knows  who  wrote  the 
book  of  Job  or  many  of  the  Psalms.  They  are  none 
the  less  inspired  for  that  reason  :  and  to  raise  the  cry 
of  danger  to  the  Bible  when  such  things  are  asserted  by 
Christian  scholars,  to  scream  frantically  to  the  church 
to  rush  to  the  dykes  and  stop  the  inpouring  and  de- 
vouring flood,  as  if  both  her  life  and  her  Bible  de- 
pended on  the  successful  denial  of  such  assertions — is 
simply  to  cry  "  the  gyascutus  has  broke  loose ! "  and 
to  raise  a  panic  which  is  as  ridiculous  as  it  is  cause- 
less. If  it  can  be  shown  that  the  critics  are  wrong, 
well  and  good.  If  they  are  right,  well  and  good  also. 
If  the  church  has  been  under  any  mistake  about  the 
Bible,  she  is  the  one  most  interested  in  knowing  it.  If 
the  church  has  that  faith  in  the  Bible  which  she  pro- 
fesses to  have,  she  will  not  be  afraid  to  have  the  truth 
about  it  appear :  she  will  believe  that  the  Bible  will 
come  out  of  the  hottest  Are  of  criticism,  in   a  new 


38  THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

guise  perhaps,  but  more  glorious  and  with  a  mightier 
power  of  appeal  than  ever.  Free  discussion  cannot 
hurt  the  church  or  the  Bible. 

Nor  is  it  fair  to  identify  the  free  discussion  of  such 
questions  with  the  question  of  orthodoxy.  No  creed 
or  confession  makes  it  heresy  for  a  man  to  believe  that 
David  did  not  write  all  the  Psalms ;  or  that  there  were 
two  authors  of  Isaiah.  No  creed  or  confession  requires 
any  man  to  hold  a  particular  theory  of  inspiration  on 
penalty  of  disfranchisement.  Both  the  Westminster 
and  the  Anglican  articles  content  themselves  with  assert- 
ing the  fact  of  inspiration  without  attempting  to  de- 
fine its  mode.  It  is  only  six  or  seven  }Tears  since  two 
most  promising  young  men  were  rejected  by  the  Pres- 
bytery of  New  York  in  the  face  of  a  declaration 
which  Dr.  Sehaff  affirmed  would  have  satisfied  any 
church  council  in  Christendom,  and  all  because  they  re- 
fused to  affirm  that  the  original  autographs  of  Scrip- 
ture were  absolutely  without  error  in  all  particulars. 
The  test  was  one  which  the  Presbytery  had  no  right  to 
impose,  which  was  entirely  extra-confessional,  as  is  the 
recent  deliverance  of  the  Presbyterian  '  General  As- 
sembly on  verbal  inerrancy.  In  any  case  the  General 
Assembly  has  no  right  to  frame  and  impose  dogma,  and 
that  dogma  is  equally  unconstitutional  and  unsound. 

WHO    SHALL   TRY    SCHOLARS? 

A  second  point  of  challenge  concerns  the  tribunals 
before  which  Christian  scholars  are  summoned,  and 
which  are  called  to  decide  in  issues  that  turn  upon 
Biblical  scholarship.  The  question  of  competency 
must  be  squarely  faced  and  some  plain  things  must 


THAT  MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER  CRITIC.  39 

be  said,  even  at  the  risk  of  giving  offence.  The  trial 
of  a  Christian  scholar  on  a  question  of  critical  scholar- 
ship by  an  assembly  of  five  or  six  hundred  men,  a 
large  proportion  of  whom  are  laymen  entirely  un- 
familiar with  such  questions,  is  a  palpable  injustice 
and  an  offence  against  Christian  decency.  If  there 
must  be  a  heresy-trial,  it  should  be  before  a  com- 
mission of  the  scholar's  real  peers,  and  not  of  his  eccle- 
siastical peers  merely.  A  writer  in  a  recent  number  of 
the  New  York  Evangelist  states  that  at  the  last  Gen- 
eral Assembly,  the  Presbytery  of  Dakota  was  repre- 
sented by  two  Indians,  "  one  a  pure-blood,  the  other  a 
French  half-breed.  One  of  them  could  neither  speak 
nor  understand  the  English  language,  the  other  could 
scarcely  understand  it  and  could  not  converse  in  it." 
And  yet  these  two  were  members  of  the  court  which 
tried  and  condemned  Professor  Smith,  and  their  votes 
counted  as  much  as  would  the  votes  of  Dr.  Prentiss  or 
of  Dr.  Parkhurst  if  they  had  been  members  of  the 
Assembly. 

I  remember  a  lad  in  northern  New  York,  a  nice  boy, 
who  grew  up  in  the  shadow  of  the  Presbyterian  Church, 
who  never  went  to  college  and  never  displayed  any 
scholarly  tendencies,  and  who,  at  an  early  age,  took 
his  place  in  his  father's  wholesale  grocery  and  became, 
I  believe,  an  efficient  and  excellent  grocer.  In  due 
time  his  Christian  character  and  general  intelligence 
caused  him  to  be  chosen  to  the  Eldership.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  he  knew  whether  Hebrew  was  read  from 
left  to  right,  or  from  right  to  left,  or  upside  down  ;  that 
he  had  the  faintest  knowledge  of  church  history  ;  that  he 
could  have  distinguished  a  Greek  character  from  a  cunei- 


40         THAT  MONSTER,  THE   HIGHER  CRITIC. 

form,  or  that  be  had  any  more  critical  knowledge  of  the 

Bible  than  he  might  have  gotten  in  working  out  his  Sun- 
day-school lesson  with  a  commentary  and  a  lesson  paper. 
Yet  he  was  a .  member  of  the  Assembly  which  tried  Pro- 
fessor BriggS.  And  this  is  only  one  specimen  of  scores 
of  ecclesiastical  jurors  whose  lives  are  passed  in  trade 
and  agriculture,  good,  devout  men  who  read  their 
Bibles,  men  of  hard  common  sense,  intelligent  enough 
in  dealing  with  any  matter  which  they  understand  or 
can  he  made  to  understand,  hut.  as  unfitted  to  sit  in 
judgment  upon  questions  of  Biblical  scholarship  and 
criticism  as  an  amiable  Christian  butcher  is  to  operate 
upon  a  brain-tumor.  Nay,  even  certain  gentlemen  of 
the  legal  profession,  who  have  made  themselves  con- 
spicuous in  recent  ecclesiastical  prosecutions,  and  who 
have  been  indiscreet  enough  to  put  themselves  into 
print,  have  furnished  a  significant  commentary  upon 
the  wisdom  of  the  venerable  adage  "Let  the  shoemaker 
stick  to  his  last." 

Let  it  be  plainly  understood,  and  the  sooner  it  is  un- 
derstood the  better  for  all  parties,  that  criticism,  Higher 
Criticism,  has  come  to  stay,  and  to  fight  if  necessary. 
The  time  has  passed  for  the  Christian  critic  to  stand  hat 
in  hand  before  the  sanhedrims  of  the  church  supplicat- 
ing for  toleration.  He  has  a  right  in  the  church  and 
a  place  in  the  church  ;  a  right  to  speak  and  to  be  heard  ; 
a  right  to  prosecute  the  free  investigation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures within  the  church,  and  a  right  to  resist  those  who 
attempt  to  thrust  him  out  of  doors.  It  will  be  the  part 
of  wisdom  for  the  church  to  take  care  how  she  dials 
with  her  Christian  scholars,  ami  to  beware  of  arraying 
her  scholars  against   herself.     The  church  which  pulls 


THAT   MONSTER,   THE   HIGHER   CRITIC.  4L 

down  the  men  who  seek  to  mount  to  the  high  watch- 
towers  and  to  kindle  the  lamps  of  truth,  may  indeed 
succeed  in  keeping  its  lighthouses  dark  ;  but  it  will  not 
be  very  long  before  that  church  will  go  down  in  the 
world's  charts  as  a  barren,  desolate,  dangerous  reef, 
bristling  with  menace  of  shipwreck. 


Date  Due 

jjpBJ*^-* 

f) 

BS500  .V77 

That  monster  the  higher  critic. 


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